


Going Out

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, New York City, disbanded Avengers, post CA: CW, some drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 03:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7828258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda starts spending a suspicious amount of time with Vision, leaving Natasha to wonder if they're really as close as she'd thought. (This work can stand alone)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Out

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt and some plot ideas for this came from AO3 user JainaDarklighter. Let Natasha Romanoff have emotions 2k16

Natasha is out hunting for an apartment for herself and Wanda. Previously, they’d been living in their old rooms in Avengers tower, but then some people started to catch on that perhaps the Avengers were still fairly present and their tower was officially closed by the government against the fugitive members of the Avengers (that being Wanda, Natasha, Steve, Clint, Sam, and then, of course, Scott. That poor guy didn’t ask for any of this).

 It’s a real shame, actually; after the Civil War and the disbanding of the Avengers, the team would still come to the tower for perhaps a few days of hours. A place to live; something familiar. Maybe just for something as trivial as to eat breakfast; to pretend that some things were still the same. There was a mission scare, once, when Wanda, Clint, and Nat were in the tower, but it turned out to just be a false alarm. Getting the Avengers out on an unauthorized mission, with the Accords in place, would be against the law, anyway.

 It was bonding for the Avengers; having their tower as their secret. Two members of opposing “teams” might happen to land there at the same time and would, maybe, start to talk. Rifts were starting to close; the team wasn’t anywhere close to reforming, but common ground was found again in a shared secret.

 But now, of course, everyone’s scattered. The building is guarded now, by women and men in black uniforms and rifles. Nobody unauthorized can get in or out, whether by flying or walking. So Nat and Wanda have staked out in a hotel suite with none other than the Vision.

Wanda wanted to bring him; they’d grown attached to each other, bonding in their mutually strange lives. After Natasha, he’s likely Wanda’s closest confidant. Natasha let him stay, just because where else is a red metal man going to go? As long as he doesn’t try to cook, he probably won’t be too much of a nuisance.

 

Right?

 

***

 

Wanda buries herself in the covers of her and Natasha’s bed. The hotel suite is made of three adjoining rooms; a room with a twin bed and a pullout couch on one side, then a common space, with a large couch, a chair, and a TV, and then another room with two queen-size beds. She and Natasha sleep on one of the queen-sized beds together, while Vision takes the twin bed in the room across the common area. Or at least he says he does. Neither woman is sure if he actually ever sleeps.

Wanda misses Natasha. She’s been out for the past couple of days, coming back to the room frustrated each time. She leaves early in the morning, after kissing Wanda goodbye, and only returns in the late afternoon. Sometimes she drops in for lunch and sometimes she doesn’t, but she’ll always tell Wanda so she knows whether or not to eat on her own.

 Wanda doesn’t want to admit it, but Natasha gives her much-wanted stability. It unnerves her to not have had her for the past few days. But she’s got Vision. If Natasha’s her girlfriend (and she is), Vision’s the total Dad Friend.

 

The thought makes her laugh and she calls Vision into the room, wanting conversation. “Use the door,” she reminds him. His entrances through the walls still unnerve her.

 

Almost immediately, he phases through the door. “Vis!” Wanda exclaims at his entrance, shaking her head. “ _Open_ the door, please!”

“Sorry,” says Vision. “I forgot. It’s a new place, here; I’m not entirely used to it yet. And you did call me.”

Wanda shakes her head and smiles. “You should really learn some more human etiquette,” she says, but she’s not mad. Vision walks over to the other queen-size bed and sits there. There’s a table between the two beds, with Nat and Wanda’s respective electronic devices, a few books, and a kindle. Vision, curious, lifts Wanda’s iPhone off the table and turns it on. “Password?” he asks, giving the phone to her. She enters it and gives it back to him, wondering what he’s up to.

“I was spending some time on the Internet yesterday,” Vision says, tapping on Wanda’s phone curiously. “There’s a new app out. It’s extremely popular. I’ve downloaded it into my headspace and I wondered if you’d like to play it together.”

He holds up the phone.

 

Vision’s been surfing the Internet in his head for the past few days, insatiably curious about human culture. Somehow, he’s able to download apps and articles straight into his artificial cerebellum. Does he have an Apple ID in there? How does he play/read the things he downloads? Can he torrent movies? Neither Wanda nor Natasha wants to think about it too much.

 

“What’s the app called?” asks Wanda, plucking the phone from Vision’s hand with her magic and opening the App store. “Is it free?”

“It’s called Pokémon Go, and yes, it’s free.”

“Alright, then.”

 

Wanda searches for the app. It’s apparently “trending,” so she taps on it and begins the download. “Aren’t Pokémon those little monsters that people catch in balls in video games?”

Vision nods. “I’ve done extensive research, and you are correct.”

Of course he’s done extensive research on fictional monsters. Of course.

 While waiting for the app to finish downloading, Wanda lies back on her bed and stares at the ceiling. She can almost picture Natasha’s face staring down at her, that beautiful smirk on her face. But Natasha isn’t here and the suite feels empty without her.

 

At least she’s got Vision.

 

When the app is fully downloaded, she opens it up. It prompts her to select a username, but Wanda and WandaMaximoff are apparently already taken. So are ScarletWitch and TheScarletWitch. She has fans, apparently.

 

Finally, thinking it would be a funny joke, she types in NatashasGirlfriend as a username and giggles. She customizes her avatar as brunette, wearing black and red, and watches as she shows up next to a fairly wide road. A few strange blue column-like things stick up around her virtual person, and she taps one. The app zooms in to reveal a circle, with a picture of the hotel lobby’s fountain in it and the words “THIS POKÉSTOP IS TOO FAR AWAY.”

Huh. This looks like fun.

 

“Vision?” she asks. “Where are you on here?”

“Oh, no,” he says. “It’s single-player. But we can go on walks together, to visit gyms and Pokéstops. There are quite a few in New York City; there’s even a gym on this block.”

“What do you do at gyms?”

“You? Well, not much if you haven’t caught anything.”

Suddenly, three digital creatures spring up around Wanda’s avatar. “Oh!” she says, tapping the red-orange one. “Look at it!”

She holds out the phone to Vision, who smiles. “Catch it!” he says.

“How?” Wanda asks.

He takes the phone and lobs the Pokéball at the creature. There’s a flash and it gets sucked up into the ball, which shakes for a moment on the screen as the background image is folded glitchily. Then the word “Gotcha!” appears on the screen, and Charmander is registered into Wanda’s pokedex.

“This is so neat!” Wanda says. “Let’s go to that Pokéstop, the one in the lobby!”

“Alright,” says Vision, pleased by her enthusiasm. They leave the room, Wanda making sure that Vision exits properly, and head downstairs. On the way, Wanda sees a brown-yellow bird apparently named “Pidgey” and catches it, imitating what Vision did. That’s followed by a Rattata and an Eevee, which is probably her favorite so far; it looks like a tiny, baby fox with anime-like brown eyes. She names it Wanda, just for fun.

When they reach the lobby, Wanda beelines for the fountain and watches in delight as the cube atop the Pokéstop spike expands into the circle. Tapping the circle does nothing, so she spins it, and three Pokéballs and a raspberry pop out in bubbles.

 

She taps on the bubbles to take them and grins. It’s a cutesy game, but she can already tell she likes it. “Where’s the gym?” she asks Vision.

 

“The app reads that it’s about a block away,” he says, “but you have to be at least level five to fight.”

“Well, I’ll just catch more Pokémon on the way and then I’ll watch you fight, perhaps.”

“I have the app in here,” Vision says, tapping his head. “Nobody can see it but me.”

“Right,” recalls Wanda. “Well, do you want to go Pokémon-hunting with me?”

Vision smiles. “Of course.”

He reaches for his coat and puts it on over his navy-blue sweater and white collared shirt, bundling up to his neck, so his red metal skin shows as little as possible. He also picks up some sort of mask, a sort of distorted version of the same technology Natasha used to disguise herself as the British Councilwoman Hawley when S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised in DC. Looking at him, you wouldn’t think him anything other than a perfectly normal human being, wearing gloves and a coat because it’s a cold winter day.

 

They head out into the city streets. Wanda tucks her long brown hair into her baseball cap and dives deeper into her jacket, desperately hoping she won’t be recognized. She wonders about her own moods as she and Vision walk; she’s been so much happier lately; smiling more freely, and even getting addicted to a Nintendo app.

 Some of that comes from Natasha, her gorgeous, clever girlfriend who lights up her heart. And some of that comes from herself; she’s starting to realize that Pietro is not as gone as she thinks. Every time she smiles, every time she stretches her arms out to defend, to protect, he’s there with her. He pictures him walking next to her, staring deep into the pixels on her screen and pointing out each time a new creature pops onto the screen near her avatar. Pietro was never the more intelligent of the twins (not even close), but his interests and passions were pure, and he felt everything intensely. This app is exactly the thing that would fascinate him. Perhaps as Wanda gets lost into the digital world superimposed across the real, she’s trying to become a bit more like him, to bring him closer. In another world, they could be playing the game together.

She catches another Pidgey. “These birds are everywhere,” she tells Vision. He nods and smiles. “These and the Rattatas.”

Wanda nods and turns to hit up a Pokéstop, a graffiti mural cityscape on a nearby wall. When she looks back, Vision is watching her with a funny smile on his face.  
“What?” she asks, breaking into a grin and brushing a strand of hair back up into her cap, Sokovian accent strong. “What is it, Vis?”

“It is so, so good to see you happy,” he says. Then he faces forward and continues walking.

 

They arrive at the Gym, which is, disappointingly, just another hotel. Wanda taps it on the screen and is prompted to choose a team by tree silhouettes in the primary colors. They each give her some sort of advertisement for their team.

 

_Pokémon are creatures with excellent intuition. I bet the secret to their intuition is related to how they're hatched. Come and join my team. You never lose when you trust your instinct!_

_The wisdom of Pokémon is immeasurably deep. I'm researching why it is that they evolve. My team? With our calm analysis of every situation, we can't lose!_

_Pokémon are stronger than humans, and they're warmhearted, too! I'm researching ways to enhance Pokémon's natural power in the pursuit of true strength. There's no doubt that the Pokémon our team have trained are the strongest in battle!_

 

Wanda’s always been partial to the color red, and “strongest in battle” suits her just fine. She taps on “Candela” and is welcomed to Team Valor.

 

Vision makes some sort of disappointed noise. “Oh, boo,” smirks Wanda. “I bet you took one half-second look and chose Mystic, didn’t you? You _love_ logic and…” she trails off, snapping her fingers in concentration as she searches for the English word but can’t quite find it. Tiny red sparks fly off the ends of her fingers, but she doesn’t notice. “Capability?” No, that’s not it.

 

“You can speak to me in Sokovian, you know,” says Vision, suddenly.

“Really?” asks Wanda, turning to him in surprise. “Why didn’t you say before?”

“I only downloaded the e-dictionary today,” said Vision. “As a text file, it hardly takes up any storage; I’m surprised I didn’t think of it earlier.”

He’s speaking in perfect Sokovian, and Wanda is blown away. Immediately, she speaks back, excited to have her mother tongue flowing in her mouth once again.

“That’s wonderful! I have nothing against English, of course, but speaking in Sokovian again is truly lovely. Thank you, Vis!”

Vision smiles widely. “Like I said, I want you to be happy.”

 

All the way back to the hotel room they laugh and chatter, catch Pokémon, and discuss the Sokovian words that don’t have literal translations into English, like the feeling of joy when you finally reunite with someone after a long time apart.

Wanda’s beaming the whole time, and for a moment, despite the fact that she’s talking to someone who isn’t even human at all, she feels, in reconnecting to her language, a little bit more normal. More like the Wanda Maximoff she used to be and less like the alternately loved and feared Scarlet Witch.

 

When they get back to the hotel, Natasha’s there. She’s sprawled out on the queen bed she and Wanda share, clearly exhausted.

 

“Nat!” exclaims Wanda, rushing over to her side.

“No need to Sleeping Beauty me,” mutters Natasha, cracking open her eyes to meet Wanda’s own as they hover above her.

“I wasn’t going to,” says Wanda. She’s concerned; Natasha looks a bit flushed. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” sighs Nat, sitting up in the pillows. “Just fine. I brought lunch.”

She gestures to the bedside table, where there’s an unopened pizza box. “Sorry for the unexpected re-entrance. I think I may have found an apartment for us, and I decided to come back to celebrate with you. As soon as I got in here, though, I just crashed, since you weren’t here.”

She sighs and leans her head back to the wooden headboard, running her fingers up her forehead and into her hair. “Where were you guys?”

“We were-” begins Vision.

“Just walking!” cuts in Wanda, not wanting her girlfriend to know she was trekking all over New York City looking for fictional digital monsters in a video game.

Vision gives her a funny look, but stays quiet.

Natasha also gives her a somewhat surprised glance, clearly noting how Wanda cut Vision off, as if hiding something.  
“That’s nice,” she says, a tad carefully. “And we don’t have a car, so I guess you had no other choice.”

 

However, any half-formed suspicions soon drop from Natasha’s mind as she and Wanda open the box and gorge themselves on the beauty of well-made New York pizza.

“You humans are so bizarre,” remarks Vision, having shed his disguise (well, except for the sweater, shirt, and pants he usually wears). “Are you really eating curdled, solidified calf nourishment on baked wheat with processed meat on top of that?”

“Hell yes,” mutters Natasha, her mouth full. She stares Vision defiantly in the eye as she takes another cheesy bite. He is forced to drop her gaze, unable to comprehend it.

 “Amazing,” he is heard muttering to himself as he leaves the room through the closed door, presumably to surf the web some more. “And they take _pride_ in eating that, too.”

 

Wanda cackles and Natasha cracks up. They roll around in their chairs, laughing far more than they need to -- but they need to. They need to laugh. They laugh as they clear the table and throw the pizza box away and they laugh as Wanda presses herself on Natasha and they undress and roll over each other in bed together to forget the world for a while.

 

***

 

The next morning, Nat takes a shower early and heads into the city. She wants to make sure the apartment she found the day before hadn’t been bid upon by someone else. The landlord did say he would sell it to her, but he struck Natasha as somewhat of a shady figure.

 

Before she exits, she drops a soft kiss on Wanda’s sleeping cheek and places a note on the bedside table.

 

It reads:

 

_My dear Wanda,_

 

_I’ve gone out for what is hopefully the last time. If all goes well, we will have our new home in our pockets within the week. I am looking forward to sharing the upcoming chapter in my life by your side._

_I adore you, my fiery red witch. Never stop shining._

 

_Much love,_

_Natasha_

 

She hasn’t been able to write or speak the fateful words “I love you” since she was a child. Does she still believe that love is for children? She doesn’t know.

 

She doesn’t know if her uncertainty means she isn’t truly in love with Wanda. After all, Natasha doesn’t know what love is supposed to be.

 _That’s not true_ , she tells herself mentally as she takes her black bag filled with all the day’s necessities and dons her knee-length black heeled boots (Are they overkill? Maybe. But they have a fantastic kick).

_You do know love. Natasha Romanoff, the woman, knows love. It was Natalia Romanova, the child, who did not._

She still talks to herself in her mind. It was a coping mechanism for her, in the Red Room. Though it’s been years since that trauma ended, it has still left scars in her mind and mannerisms.

Natasha leaves the room with a final backward glance at the sleeping Scarlet Witch.

She tries to say it.

“I love-”

 

The words die in her throat. She means it, means every part of it, but the words can’t make it past her lips.

 

***

 

When Wanda wakes up, the suite is cold, and she realizes in their earlier giddy fervor (which she initiated most of, she realizes, somewhat guiltily) they had forgotten to turn on the heater.

 She, shivering, leaves the comfort of the bed and flicks the thermostat up to 75 degrees. When she returns to the bedside table to do some reading, she sees the note Natasha left.

 Reading through it, she smiles and presses the note to her chest. Still clutching it, she goes to their shared closet and dons a black dress and the jacket she’s had since the battle with Ultron -- technically Natasha’s, but hers now.

 Now dressed, she returns to the bed, takes her book ( _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ ) and curls herself up in the covers while waiting for the hotel room to warm up a little.

 A cat has just been found Petrified when Vision knocks on the door. “Come in!” calls Wanda cheerfully, placing the book down next to her.

 

Vision successfully enters the room like a human and drifts to the other bed. “I think I managed that quite well,” he observes, pointing at the door.

“You did indeed,” says Wanda, smiling. “So, what is it? More Pokémon?”

“If that’s what you desire,” he replies in perfect, if formal, Sokovian.

 

Wanda had almost forgotten about his new skill. “That would be fantastic,” she affirms, also in Sokovian.

 

Vision smiles at her and the two of them leave the room, Wanda with her phone and hair tucked into her hat and Vision in his human disguise. As they exit the hotel and walk down the boulevard, taking the same route to the gym as last time, Wanda decides to ask Vision a bit about himself.

 

“When you were first… born? Created? What was the first thing you thought of?” she queries.

Vision is silent for a long moment. “I don’t quite recall,” he says, thoughtfully. “I don’t know how I could. I had just come into being, and every thought I could possibly conceive of was running through my head all at once. You were there, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It was strange, becoming conscious. As if I had been trapped and still for eons and then could suddenly move in all directions at once. An explosion of newness. Like light.”

“Weren’t you around before?” asks Wanda. “In another form?”

“Jarvis,” says Vision, in the tone of voice you might use to describe a friend of a friend you can’t quite decide if you truly like. “The memories of Jarvis are still in me. Somewhere. I have them filed, however. It…. confuses me.”

“I’d imagine.”

 

Wanda catches a Goldeen and another two Eevees. She levels up.

 “There are quite a few creatures on this street,” she says, catching a Staryu. Thinking of the crystal in Vision’s forehead and his red-and-gold appearance, she names it after him.

He notices and laughs. “I’m very flattered, Wanda.”

Wanda, a bit embarrassed, hides the screen of her phone.

 

They keep walking, close together. Vision offers to take her into a restaurant that they pass by. It looks like a salad and sandwich shop, and Wanda realizes she hasn’t eaten breakfast.

 She accepts the offer and they turn off the sidewalk and into the restaurant, seating themselves at a booth by the window. Just as they’re sitting down, Wanda’s cell phone vibrates. It’s Nat.

 

“Hello, Natasha,” she says cheerfully, lifting the phone to her ear and idly resting her elbow on the table. She realizes she’s said it in Sokovian and switches to English. “Sorry about that.”

“Was that Sokovian?” Natasha asks.

“Yes,” Wanda answers. She smiles at the waiter as he brings the menus. “I’ve been speaking with Vision in it. He downloaded a dictionary and he’s now completely fluent; isn’t that wonderful?”

“Very,” says Natasha. There’s something in her tone that Wanda can’t place. Sadness? Surely not jealousy!

“What is it?” asks Wanda. Perhaps she’s a bit more short than she’d expected, because there’s a tiny pause before Natasha responds.

“Bad news,” she exhales, frustratedly. “The landlord’s a slimeball; he sold the apartment off yesterday to some heterosexual billionaire couple who offered him one-and-a-half times what we offered.”

“I thought you said you had the apartment!”

“ _It’s not my fault!_ ” Natasha snaps. “He said one thing and did another!”

“I didn’t mean it like-”

Natasha has already hung up. Wanda hadn’t meant it as an accusation; she was just trying to express her outrage at the landlord for reneging on his word. She wasn’t angry at Natasha! Not for that, anyway.

She curses in Sokovian, using the worst word she knows. Vision looks completely and utterly flabbergasted, an expression which distorts his face-mask to a degree that would make Wanda laugh if she weren’t so angry.

 

She reaches a trembling hand up to her forehead, mad at herself and mad at Natasha. Mad at Natasha because she overreacted; that much is clear. Mad at herself, too, for misspeaking. She hadn’t meant to injure. She truly _wasn’t_ mad at Nat; it was the landlord. The stupid landlord and his stupid apartment, which they wouldn’t even need if not for stupid Steve and stupid Tony just so unable to _talk_ instead of acting, which wouldn’t’ve even been a problem if she hadn’t blown up that stupid building on that stupid mission in stupid Lagos and-

“Wanda,” warns Vision. Wanda opens her eyes to realize that the air around her hand is starting to stain red with tiny flames of magic from her palm. She clenches her hand into a fist, extinguishing her magic, and drops the hand into her lap.

She _is_ mad at Natasha. She hates being snapped at.

 

Her hands are knotted tightly together in her lap when the waiter returns. “Are you ready to order?” he asks, pad and pen out.

 Wanda quickly unclenches her fingers and opens the menu, skimming down it lightning-fast. “I’ll have the cream-of-broccoli soup and the… salmon,” she says, selecting two items almost at random.

 

The waiter smiles and writes it down. “Would you like oyster crackers with the soup?”

“Yes, please.”

 

“And for you?” he asks, turning to Vision.

“Nothing for me; thank you,” he replies.

 

The waiter smiles and turns away.

 

***

 

Natasha looks at the phone in her hand. “Calm down,” she tells herself. “You’re going to call Wanda back.”

 

Just not right that second. She takes a few deep breaths. Dishonesty bothers her; it always has. She should never have trusted the landlord to be true to his word, especially when her instincts were telling her he was a dodgy character.

 

Her whole day has plummeted from not great to absolutely terrible. The loss of the apartment she thought she had was a major setback; not only was it a colossal disappointment, but it was the only apartment she’d been able to find that was a reasonable price and would suit their needs. And because she’d lost it, they’d have to stay in the hotel longer, which was expensive. And any day they spent there, they could be recognized and reported.

 

It’s no wonder she snapped out at Wanda, really. She’s had a lot on her mind.

 

She hails a taxi and decides to keep looking for a new place to live, starting again from zero. Fatigue has set in, and with it, more anger. She doesn’t know who to direct it at, and some of it crawls towards Wanda. How dare she accuse her like that -- it’s Natasha who has gone out for days and days, searching for a place for the both of them. It’s Natasha whose feet are tired from the constant walking, and it’s Natasha’s wallet that’s growing thin from all the taxicab rides. And Wanda and Vision are hiding something, aren’t they? She remembers the last night and Wanda’s claim that she and Vision had been out walking around the city. It sounded like she was covering something up. _What is Wanda not telling me?_

 When the afternoon apartment search turns up nothing (of course), she returns to the apartment pissed, with her nerves frayed-out. Wanda and Vision are still out. She doesn’t care.

 

She showers efficiently and throws herself into bed.

 

***

 

After lunch, Wanda and the Vision decide to tour the city. With half a mind, Wanda misses Natasha. But she also thinks it might be good for them to have a break. They are both powerful in anger, and it is better to spend time apart than direct that anger at each other.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway. She’s spent almost all of her time with Natasha for the past almost two weeks, so having an afternoon with Vision is lovely. She gets to speak in Sokovian again and teach Vision about human culture, which is almost as hilarious as it is ineffective. She’s not fully sure he’s even grasped the concept of ‘societal norms,’ much less why people might say things they don’t mean in anger or moments of irrationality.

 

She also gets to go shopping and catch Pokémon; that’s a big plus.

 

As she and Vision head around the block in search of a Blastoise that showed up in the “sightings,” she realizes it’s gotten dark. It’s past the time Natasha usually gets home from the city, meaning she’s likely come back to an empty apartment.

Wanda wants to catch the turtle, but more than that, she wants to be a good girlfriend, and a loyal one. So she turns back early, telling Vision she’d like to go back to the apartment.

He agrees, reluctantly. “Very well.”

 

When they finally arrive, Natasha is already asleep. It’s gotten much later than Wanda had expected on the way back; they’d had to walk, because after the lunch, Wanda hadn’t had any money to hail a cab.

 She leans down over Natasha, whose face is wrinkled and looks almost impaired. She sleep-mutters something that Wanda can’t understand and then kicks out violently.

 

Wanda showers and then checks on Natasha again, but she’s taken up almost all the space on the double-bed with her kicking. Reluctantly, Wanda takes the other bed and looks across at her girlfriend. She wants to apologize for snapping, but she doesn’t want to wake her.

 

She’ll do it in the morning.

 

***

 

The next morning, though, when Natasha wakes up, Wanda’s gone. Looking into the next two rooms, she sees that Vision’s gone, too.

 She tries not to think of what that might mean. She tries very hard, but sleep is still in her mind. She remembers their small spat the day before and also remembers that it had never been resolved. Then, another suspicion hits her. She looks over at the bed across from her and sees that it’s been slept in.

 Maybe Wanda didn’t want to wake Natasha. Maybe Wanda was so mad at her she was repulsed by her very presence.

 

Regardless, they’d slept in separate beds.

 

As Natasha stares at the empty apartment around her, she hears Madame B.’s voice in the back of her mind.

“Love is cruelty, Natalia,” she says, her voice a sick caress. “Remember that the ceremony is necessary.”

Natasha closes her eyes and lies back. Better to be asleep than deal with this. She prays not to dream, and, in a rare blessing, she doesn’t.

 

She’s woken only about a half-hour later by her phone ringing loudly on the bedside table. “I should’ve put the damn thing on silent,” she mutters as she drags herself back to consciousness. Still, if it’s Wanda, she’s happy to talk.

 It isn’t Wanda, though, or even Vision. It’s Steve.

 

Huh.

 

“Romanoff here,” she yawns. “How did you fuck up this time, Rogers?”

“Oh, shut up,” comes the mutter from the other end of the line. “It’s not a fuck-up.”

“Sure,” Natasha says dryly, cheering up enough to be sarcastic at the sound of her friend’s voice. “Alright, what do you need help with, then?”

“Maybe I’m just calling to say hello; ever think of that?”

She snorts “Come on, Steve. You’re always needing my help. Honestly, you’re more of a damsel-in-distress than any girl has ever been. What is it this time; can’t figure out a microwave?”

“You are _never_ gonna let me forget that one, are you?”

“Nope.” She yawns again. “But seriously. What is it? This conversation is putting me back to sleep.”

It really is; she can barely keep her eyelids open, even though it’s almost eleven o’clock.

“Bucky’s sick.”

That wakes her right up.

“Shit.”

“Exactly. I was wondering if you could possibly go to a pharmacy and pick up some cough medicine and some…” he trails off. “Some whatever it is people use for fevers?”

Natasha lets out a long groan. “You owe me big-time, Rogers. Remind me why I should do this instead of you?”

“Because I, the clueless idiot from the forties -- you said it, not me -- doesn’t know how modern pharmacies work. And also I can’t seem to go low-profile for the life of me. Someone’ll recognize me and then that’ll be a mess, seeing as I’m a ‘fugitive’ and all.”

“You’re still bitter over that, I see. And so am I, you know. I busted ass for you at that airport and who got all the benefits? You, of course.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

Natasha exhales, still unconvinced. She’s tired and Wanda’s gone and she’s worried, truly worried, that she won’t come back.

“Natasha, you’re a master of disguise. I’ve never seen someone as skilled as you operate on the ground on a day-to-day basis. I know we all -- well, everyone but those who sided with Tony -- have to hide. And you’re better than most.”

“No lie there,” she sighs. “Fine. I’ll do it. But I can call in _two_ favors from you, okay? You’re paying me back with interest this time.”

“You got it, Romanoff,” Steve replies. She can tell there’s a smile in his voice.

“Later, Rogers,” she sighs, and hangs up.

 

She gets dressed for the day, wearing the olive green jacket she shares with Wanda and a pair of jeans tucked into her favorite black boots. She throws on her short blonde wig, lipsticks her lips, adds blue eyeliner, and heads out into the street.

 

She’s Nellie Racer and she wants some medicine for her boyfriend’s nasty cold.

 

In the CVS at the nearest strip mall (which isn’t all that near, all things considered), she chooses some generic brand Ibuprofen and the cheapest cough medicine she can find, after checking to make sure the active ingredient, dextromethorphan, is comparable to the others. She's paying for this herself, likely as not.

 

She keeps her head down as she makes the purchase and tips three quarters into the jar. With the medicine under her arm, she decides to walk to Steve’s apartment.

She'd found it for them, so she'd know where it is. Brooklyn, of course. It was the only one there that she could find, so getting one nearby for herself and Wanda was out of the question, unfortunately.

Steve saved her life, so it was the least she could do to help him and his boyfriend find happiness in a safe home.

 

On her way there, she decides to call him, so she's not barging in unannounced. On the second ring, he picks up.

 

“Hey, Steve. I bought some cough syrup and Ibuprofen. I’m heading over to your apartment, so let me in, okay?” she says. She’s never been one for a huge preamble.

“Alright,” Steve replies. “I might get there a little bit after you, but Bucky’ll probably let you in.”  
“I don’t know, Rogers. His trust issues are sky-high.”

“He knows you.”  
“Yeah; he remembers shooting me; that’s for sure.”

“Well, maybe you can bond over that or something.”

“Oh, _please_.” Natasha rolls her eyes.

 

There’s a pause. Then she thinks of something. Steve said he wasn’t in his apartment, meaning he’s out somewhere in the city.

 

“Okay, so why are you out if you’re trying to keep a low profile? And if you’re out, why didn’t you go to the pharmacy instead of dragging me out of bed?” she demands. “Dick move.”

“Nat, it’s noon.”

“I can tell time, goddammit.” She’s prickly.

“I don’t know how modern pharmacies work, as I mentioned.” Steve’s defensive now.

“You literally go up to the person at the desk and ask for the medicine you want.”

“Oh.” He seems surprised. “Well, I’d probably be recognized.”

Nat sighs. “Yeah; that’s unfortunately true. Thanks to sexism, you’re much more well-known than me. Though now, I guess, that works to my advantage, huh?

Anyway, I have the medicine and I’ll be right over. But if I become the Avengers’ errand girl, I swear I will fucking shoot someone.”

“Nobody wants you to do that, Natasha.”

“Yeah. Thank god.”

 

There’s another pause.

 

“I’ve been a bit snappish lately, huh?” she asks.

“All your points are valid,” Steve says.

“Eh. It might be Wanda, if I’m being honest,” she confesses.

“What about Wanda?” he asks.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”

Angry at herself for even saying that much, she hangs up.

 

After that, she slows her pace. It's not a conscious decision; she does want to get the medicine to Bucky as soon as she can. But she's lost in thought and depressed.

 

The catcalls don’t help. Every time someone shouts at her, she gives them the finger as she walks past. Usually, she’d go over and deck the really aggressive ones, but today, her mind doesn’t seem to be quite in her body and she can’t muster the energy.

As she's placing one foot in front of the other, skirting the road dangerously and uncaringly, she makes up her mind to ask Wanda about her relationship with Vision. And she expects the worst.

She slows further. It's cold out, and, though she glances hopefully towards the sky for snow, not even a cloud can be seen. So she keeps walking, head down, eyes crisscrossing the sidewalk in front of her.

 

She hits a stoplight at a crowded intersection. As she waits, (it's a long light), she once again gets the urge to hold her hands against each other behind her back.

 

When she was in the Red Room, standing en pointe with your hands crossed behind your back and contorted into clawlike shapes was one of the instructors’ favorite poses for the girls. It was impossibly hard to hold and therefore extremely useful.

Nat had to do it so often it became like a habit, an instinct, to stand with her hands like that. When still, her hands would find their way into that pose and hold themselves there, sometimes without her even being conscious of her moving them until they were pressed against her back. She'd thought the habit had gone away, but that it's returning now is troubling, to say the least.

 

She forces her hands to stay at her sides (she's carrying the medicine under her arm, after all) and exhales deeply, trying to calm her nerves. Emotions are weakness and must be controlled.

 

Finally, the light changes, and she walks quickly across.

 

She seems to hit every light after that, though. She’s caught at intersection after intersection, and by the time she gets to Steve and Bucky’s apartment, it’s been far longer than she’d expected to walk; almost a full two hours.

Her watch reads 2:37 as she approaches the door. Their apartment building isn’t large, but it’s well-kept, something rare in NYC. She enters the building and takes the elevator up to their floor.

 

The door’s unlocked and she assumes they’ve left it that way for her, so she slips inside without knocking. Sick people sleep a lot, and she doesn’t want to wake anybody up.

“Hello?” she calls out softly, too quietly to wake someone up. Nobody answers. Should she just leave the medicine on the floor? Steve said he might not be back before she got here, so likely the only other person in the apartment is Bucky. He can be violent and unpredictable, so she doesn’t want to surprise him. She calls out slightly louder, “Is anyone home?” but still gets no response.

 

She continues into the nearest room, a bedroom, and finds it empty. Farther along that direction is a bathroom, but the door is open and nobody’s inside. She heads in the opposite direction, past a sort of dining room/den/open space combination with cabinets all along one wall and approaches the last door in the apartment. The door is slightly ajar, and she can see someone’s back, still, on the bed.

Quietly, she slides into the room, not looking around, just there to place the medicine down and get out. Her eyes dart upward, though, catching movement, and she sees Steve and Bucky curled up together, Bucky smiling with his arm wrapped around Steve’s waist in a gesture of absolute contentment and love.

The sunlight falls across them, wrapping them in its gold embrace, running liquid across Bucky’s metal arm and highlighting every inch of their touching bodies. It pools in the folds of their clothes, falls across their cheekbones, and illuminates their love to the point of brilliance.

 

She drifts closer, almost unconsciously.

 

Yes, Bucky’s smiling. She’s never seen that before.

Steve’s smiling, too. Bucky’s sleeping face rests against his back, and Steve’s arm is down and lying against the arm Bucky has wrapped around him. They haven’t let go of each other, even in sleep.

 

Something stings in her eyes.

 

It’s their love.

 

Everything about the two of them, holding each other so closely, is the picture of trust. The picture of complete and total trust, of the deepest and purest love there is. It’s emblazoned on the back of her eyelids as she looks away, unable to even look at their embrace. They are holding each other; nothing more. But she feels as if she’s intruded on something almost sacred, as if she’s almost unworthy to witness their tenderness, their joy.

 

Has she ever loved anyone with that purity, that fierceness, that wholehearted certainty that you belong with that person, without a doubt?

 

It takes a special kind of love to survive death, to survive a half-century apart.

 

Turning slowly, she places the medicine down on the floor and closes the door behind her as she leaves.

 

She doesn’t cry. She was not allowed to, when she was younger, and that message is still inside her, like the seed of an evil weed she can’t uproot without changing her very personality. Emotions are weakness and must be controlled. So she looks upwards and blinks until, finally, the biting air wicks the would-be tears away. She’s been under pressure, she tells herself. _There’s only so much every human can handle. That’s why I almost cried. It’s not because I’m weak._

 

She hails a cab outside Steve and Bucky’s apartment and takes it all the way back to her and Wanda’s hotel. With traffic, the drive is long, so she listens to calming music on the way there, resolving once again to ask her girlfriend (is Wanda even her girlfriend, still? She doesn’t even know anymore) about the Vision.

 She crosses the lobby without making eye contact with anyone and presses the elevator button for her floor. She’s stressed out, but, looking at her, you’d know. Natasha is a master of biting her emotions away and keeping her face utterly neutral. The only indication that she’s feeling anything is that she’d pressed the button much harder than necessary.

 

On her way back to the room, she pulls the keycard from her purse but stops as she hears noises coming from inside.

 

She drops the keycard back and presses her ear to the door, listening. The conversation appears to be switching back and forth between English and Sokovian, but some things she can understand.

 

“It’s so big! I didn’t know they got this large!” That’s Wanda. Then she changes to Sokovian, speaking excitedly. Vision laughs.

 

Natasha hears sheets rusting.

_Oh my god._

  _No._

She presses herself harder against the door, trying to catch everything she can out of the conversation, hoping desperately it’s not what she thinks.

 

There’s more Sokovian. Then “so much fun,” by a very happy-sounding Wanda. “Oh, get inside! Come on!” she demands, in a slightly frustrated tone.

 _They can’t be_ **_fucking_ ** _each other!_

 More sheets rustling.

  
Natasha’s heard enough.

She tears herself away from the door and reels across the hallway, placing her hands around her throat, trying to hold herself still as violent shuddering takes over her body. She can’t breathe.

 

_Control yourself, Natalia!_

 It’s Madame B.’s voice in her ears again.

 _You have no place in the world_ , she says.

 She keeps shaking silently.

 

_You will never know love, child. But don’t worry; it is a cruel game, and never true._

 “Get. Out. Of. My. Head,” she growls. She presses her hand against the wall to stabilize herself.

_Control yourself. Inner strength, Natalia! Discipline!_

 “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” she shouts down the hallway, banishing the ghosts of words from her mind. She spins on her heel and bolts away, away from Wanda and Vision and the memories. Her feet pound against the floor as she sprints, sprints for all she’s worth, through the hall and down the stairs and into the bathroom right off the lobby where she collapses into a stall and, for the first time in longer than she'd ever care to keep track of, lets herself cry.

 

She is torn apart by sobs. Natasha’s known grief many times over. But she’s forgotten the pure, sheer violence of tears that force the body to cope with a sadness it can’t control.

Her hands are fists on the stall’s wall. Her cries are loud and ugly but very short, and soon she’s pulling toilet paper up to her face to wipe away snot and tears and wishing desperately that the paper could also wipe away the memories of what she’s heard.

 She walks out of the hotel, then. She has her money in her purse. She has a gun. She decides to walk, to calm down. She doesn’t care that her face is red. She has just cried. Why should she be ashamed?

She half-wishes Madame B. was still alive and still with her, just so she could see her face when her training fell apart as Natasha let her tears fall, repeatedly and without shame. The thought gives her a tiny bit of joy-spite; she further broke one of the Red Room teachings today.

 

_Take that._

 

She considers calling Steve, but remembers that he’s asleep. So she decides to call her best friend, Clint. Hearing his voice (and Nathaniel’s) might just be what she needs.

 

His wife, Laura, picks up. “Natasha!” she says warmly. “Hello! How are you?”

Natasha almost starts to smile. “It’s good to hear your voice,” she says honestly. Laura is an angel, and an intelligent one, too; she only met her through Clint, but they’ve become friends in their own right, too.

 

“Hey! Is that Nat on the phone?” Natasha hears Clint query from the background. “Yup,” Laura replies. Nat can hear the smile in her voice.

“Can I talk to her?” he asks.

“Always so demanding,” Laura joke-sighs, then laughs. “Of course. I imagine she called to talk to you, anyway. Is that okay with you, Natasha?”

“Sure,” Nat replies gratefully. “I’d love to speak to him.” 

 

The phone is handed over and Natasha waits in anticipation for the sound of her friend’s voice. She misses him.

 

 “Hey, Nat,” says Clint. Natasha breaks into a tiny smile.

“Hey, Barton.”

“You don’t sound happy,” he observes. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

 

He’s perceptive, but he knows enough about her not to press. She’s grateful.

 

“Well, want to talk to baby Nat?”

Natasha half-laughs, surprised at how sharply her mood has lifted.

 

“Here you go,” Clint is saying softly to the baby on his lap. “Say hello to Auntie Nat! Show her your new word!”

 

“Unf,” Nathaniel says. “Moo!”

 “Yup,” laughs Clint. “He loves the animal noises.”

 “He’s adorable,” Natasha says, and she means it. Nathaniel is a child, a baby boy who doesn’t know her as anything other than his ‘Auntie Nat;’ his family. No clue that she’s killed. No clue that she was, for years, a tool, a weapon. He loves her, though his brain isn’t developed even to put a definition to that word.

 

It’s amazing.

 

“Didja hear that, Nathaniel? She called you adorable!”

Nathaniel Pietro Barton giggles happily. Natasha’s smile widens. Then it fades.

“I gotta go,” she says.

“Alright,” says Clint, used to short conversations. It’s a bit of an occupational hazard. “Well, come by sometime, won’t’cha?”

“I will,” says Nat. She means it. Or she wants to, anyway.

 

She hangs up.

 

Leaning back, she turns her face to the sky. Eventually, it occurs to her that it’s entirely possible she misunderstood the conversation. Half of it was in Sokovian, but what she heard seemed… pretty clear. Well, at any rate, Wanda deserves the benefit of the doubt.

 

Reluctantly, she peels herself from the wall. She’s stopped from taking a step, however, by a little girl’s gaze.

She raises her eyebrows at her. The girl gives a reluctant, shy smile.

 “Hey,” says Nat, when the child makes no movements.

“Hi,” she says back, quietly. Her eyes are a large, gorgeous brown, framed by curly hair that sticks out from her head on all sides. There’s a red clip on the side of head, pulling about half of her hair back and giving the girl a somewhat lopsided appearance.

“Where’s your mom?” Natasha asks.

“She’s right inside.” The girl gestures to the entrance to the hotel lobby. “But it’s too cold in there.”

“You should probably go back to her,” Nat says gently.

“Yeah.”

 

The child still makes no motions to leave.

 

Nat tilts her head. The girl looks anxious, like she wants to say something to Natasha.

“What is it?”

The girl’s hands clench and she looks like she’s steeling herself to do something very unpleasant.

“Areyoublackwidow?” she asks, very fast. She immediately drops her eyes to her shoes, but almost quickly risks another glance upward.

 Natasha stares at the kid in disbelief. The child looks up at her.

“Well, are you?”

 “Why do you ask?”

 

“I just think she’s really, really cool.”

 

Natasha inhales sharply.

“You do? Why? She’s a-”

She was going to say murderer, killer, spy, but the little girl’s eyes are shining.

“She saved New York!” the girl is practically bouncing up and down.  “And she kicked the butt of that metal dude in Sok-Sok-”

“Sokovia.”

“-and at first she was the only girl but that’s okay because she was so AWESOME!” The girl gives a little two-foot hop, throwing her arms out grandly. “Much better than any of the guys. She’s a superhero!”

Natasha’s bemused; her secrets are out. The world, if it cared, could know she was a Soviet spy, an assassin. A murderer, even if it wasn’t by choice. She’s got blood on her hands; they’re soaked as red as the Red Room itself. Why, then, would anybody see her as a hero?

“So you really like Black Widow, huh?” she asks the girl.

“Yes!”

 

Natasha crouches down to her and slowly pulls off her blonde wig. “Shhhhh…” she whispers.

 

The girl’s eyes get huge. “IknewitIknewitIknewitIknew it,” she whispers, in awe. “I KNEW IT!”

“Shhh!”

“Sorry.” The girl looks down but quickly darts her gaze back up again.

“You’re really pretty, by the way,” she whispers.

She gives Natasha one more quick smile and then darts into the hotel lobby to join up with her mom. Natasha watches the door swing closed behind her.

 

“Thank you,” she whispers softly. Perhaps all that red in her ledger could be erased, one day.

 

***

 

Taking the stairs back up to the apartment is a chore. She’s worried about Wanda’s reaction when she confronts her. She’s nervous that this might be the breakup, that what she heard was what she’d thought it was.

 

Finally, she gets back to the room. With supreme mental strength, she takes the keycard and swipes it, entering the room.

 

Wanda’s lying on the bed she and Nat typically share, tapping on her phone. “Get inside, get inside!” she’s hissing, tapping frantically. “Damn it,” she exclaims suddenly, dropping her phone on the bed.

Vision, across the room from her, laughs. “Did it jump the Pokéball?”

“Yeah,” sighs Wanda. “Again.”

He shrugs. “It did have a very high CP.”

“And it was so big, too!” Wanda laughs toward the ceiling and kicks her legs upward, fluffing and rustling the bedsheets. “I almost got it.”

“Almost!”

 

“Hey…” says Natasha, fully entering the room. Wanda starts. “Natasha!”

 

She immediately hides her phone underneath the pillowcase.

 

Natasha breaks into a small smile. It’s clear she was mistaken about what she heard. “Were you guys playing Pokémon?”

 Wanda seems to blush. “Yes. I’ve been playing it quite a bit, actually. Vision and I have been... going out.” 

 

She says it like an embarassed confession, and the smile drops from Natasha’s face.

“Oh,” she says.

She’s surprisingly calm. It’s what she expected, after all.

“I hope you don’t mind,” says Wanda.

“As long as you’re happy,” Natasha replies coolly. And she means it; that’s the more important thing to her.

 

Wanda blinks. That’s a bit of an odd thing for Natasha to say. “It’s not like we’re dating!” she says.

“You just said you were.”

“I said we were… oh.”

Wanda starts to laugh. That’s when Natasha really gets angry.

 

“Look, Wanda! If you’ve been going out with Vision, the least you could have done is told me! I want you to be happy and all, and I would have accepted it, but it’s unfair to just… _cheat_ on me, behind my back. And why are laughing?”

She gives a disgusted sigh and shakes her head. “Just… please go. For a while. Alright?”

“No! Natasha, you don’t understand!” Wanda looks truly horrified.

“I think I do,” Natasha replies, clipped. She’s just about done. It’s too much for her at this moment. She’s sleep-deprived, running on bad, cheap coffee, and has just lost the one person who might have, with time, taught the ex-Soviet spy that love is beautiful, after all.

“Natasha,” says Wanda. She slides out of the bed. “Please let me explain.”

 

The last thing Natasha wants to hear is an account of how Wanda took it into her mind to cheat on her.

“I’d rather not.”

 

“Please,” Wanda says, shaking her head earnesty. “If the months we’ve spent together mean anything to you, please hear me out!”

 

Natasha closes her eyes, steeling herself up again. _I am made of marble._

When she opens them again, they’re icy. “Proceed.”

 

Wanda inhales. “You were gone for hours and days at a time. I got lonely. So Vision and I started going out into the city. He told me about this game, this Pokémon game, and it was something to do while you were gone for hours. We would walk around the city and I’d get a bit more used to this new place, and all its light and noise and color.” Wanda flicks her hands out on either side of her, as if she’s running her hands over the story as she tells it.

“The game… it is simple, but it’s something Pietro would love. I could almost imagine him there, as I headed through the city. Pietro was always so caring; he loved small animals and turning over rocks and stones to find the smaller things in life.”

Wanda’s Sokovian accent is strong, and Natasha can’t help but fall back in love with Wanda’s lilting voice. “And then?”

“Well, nothing,” says Wanda. “There was nothing else.”

“But-”

“I think you might have misunderstood the ‘going out,’ as well,” chimes in Vision, cutting Natasha off. “We were not, nor were we ever, engaged in any sort of romantic relationship.” He gives a self-deprecating smile (or the android equivalent). “My amygdala is synthetic. Such a thing would not be possible for me. We are friends; confidants; but never lovers.”

 

Natasha exhales.

 

“Truly?”

“Of course, Natasha! How could I love anybody other than you?”

Nat smiles.“So?”

“So,” Wanda replies, with a teasing smile. “So there you go.”

She takes two steps toward Natasha, closing the gap between them. “I am sorry I snapped at you,” she says. “I did not mean to imply in any way that it was your fault you lost the apartment. The words came out in the wrong order, or with the wrong tone. I was not angry at you, Natasha. And I am deeply sorry for forgetting something my parents always told me and Pietro; always apologize. I did not apologize, and I was in the wrong.”

 

Natasha has to apologize, too. “I’m sorry I hung up the phone on you, cutting off what you might have said. I wasn’t in a mood to listen. That was my mistake. I was in the wrong, too.”

“So it’s both of us.”

“It takes two to have a fight, as they say,” Natasha murmurs, wryly.

“I’m sorry for any role I might have played in this misunderstanding,” adds Vision quicky. “I understand I must have misled you, and the blame for that resides, at least partially, with me.”

Nat grins. “So,” she says, placing a hand on her hips and giving Wanda her trademark smirk. “We almost broke up over a video game.”

“Seems a little bit trivial, hm?” asks Wanda, mimicking Natasha’s stance. She brushes her hair aside.

 

“So what’d you catch?” asks Natasha, passing by Wanda and flopping onto the bed. “Did you have any luck?”

Wanda settles next to her and rests her head on Nat’s shoulder. Vision looks at the two of them and smiles. “Wanda is quite good at the game,” he says.

“Aw, thanks, Vis.”

 

Natasha pulls out her own phone, ready to surprise Wanda. “Before this apartment-hunting got too serious, I’d try my hand at catching them all, too.”

“Really?”

Nat laughs. “You bet, girl.”

She opens the app. “It is sweeping the entire Earth by storm, you know,” she says, idly flicking through her own list of Pokémon as she takes Wanda in, up close, again. “I’m not surprised you got caught on it, too.”

She appears to have named a good deal of her creatures after the Avengers, with Steve being Magikarp, Tony being Tauros, Rhodes being Pinsir, Sam being Pidgeot, Thor being Pikachu, and Wanda being Ponyta, among a couple others. She’s named a Ghastly after herself and a Flareon after spunky Peggy Carter, the legendary founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

Wanda grins. “Just Earth? So… limited. Do you think it works on Asgard?”

“Well, I doubt it, or Thor wouldn’t’ve come down all the way to Earth just to catch a Pikachu.”

“He did what now?”

“I’m kidding. Anyway,” she puts her phone away, “I’m really glad we got all of this worked out, Wanda.”

“Such a silly misunderstanding,” Wanda laughs. She leans up and pecks Natasha lightly on the lips, but Natasha catches her before she pulls away, taking her into a more passionate embrace.

 

Vision, ever the master of discretion, leaves into the other room, humming loudly.

 

Natasha leaves another kiss on the tip of Wanda’s nose. “All this is really not practical for fighting,” she murmurs, running her hands through Wanda’s hair. Wanda shudders and tugs Natasha closer. Love thrums through them as they kiss once again, lips on lips, soft and warm, feeling the rifts between them close.

 

Natasha breaks away from Wanda for a moment. She feels in her diaphragm and in the place where she can feel her heart beating. It’s time to say it.

 

“I love you,” says Wanda, quietly, looking up into Natasha’s face.

Natasha inhales.

“I love you,” she replies.

 

She said it. She finally, finally let herself say it.

 

They kiss again. And again. Everything else is forgotten, for a few pure, shining moments. Of course, it’s always too few. But they can be happy. Despite the Red Room, despite Pietro, despite the violence and the blood. They can be happy. They can be in love.

 

So they live. So they are.

**Author's Note:**

> Three of the scenes (Steve and Bucky in their apartment and the phone conversations between Natasha and Steve) are also in Fever, but from Steve's perspective instead of Natasha's.


End file.
